Tiles Flipping Rigs

-



Tiles Flipping Rigs from Patrick Woo on Vimeo.

I finally got the time to  put up a test where I rigged up tiles  / cubes / boxes to flip over when a locator is within a certain distance.

The each tile has an expression that takes the distance between the locator to itself, and use that to drive its own rotateX.

I understand this is super simple to set-up in Houdini, but in Maya I had to write a script to set this up, simply because each tile had to have an expression that watches out for the locator. In this aspect, I find Maya's system to be a bit unwieldy. Even when it is procedural, it requires technical knowledge to set things up for a relatively simple task .

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maya UI Layout Example

-
Image
In reply to another StackOverflow question , I wrote 2 blocks of code that shows 2 UI layouts created with Maya's UI framework. First one looks like this: This is the code that created this first one. import maya . cmds as mc def buildUI (): winName = 'myWindow' winWidth = 200 # set a target width and reference this when you specify width if mc . window ( winName , exists = True ): mc . deleteUI ( winName ) mc . window ( winName , width = winWidth , title = 'Test Window' ) # i always have keep a reference to the main columnLayout mainCL = mc . columnLayout () mc . text ( label = 'text row 1' ) # tmpRowWidth controls the width of my columns in the rowLayout # with reference to winWidth tmpRowWidth = [ winWidth * 0.3 , winWidth * 0.7 ] mc . rowLayout ( numberOfColumns = 2 , columnWidth2 = tmpRowWidth ) # at this point our UI pointer is under the rowLayout mc . text ( label = 'row colu
Read more

Maya Expressions Part 02 - Conditional Statements

-
Image
In this second video of my Maya Expressions series, I show how use the graph editor to display a visual representation of the value of our expressions with a graph. Then I move on to explain the basics of conditional statements in Maya's expression language, which also works with MEL scripts. A basic conditional statement in MEL and Maya expression language has the structure as such: if (condition) {     statement1;     statement2; } Condition is a test to see if a comparison between values is true, or false, for most cases. Example 1: if (cube1.translateX > cube2.translateX) { do_something; } In the above example, if cube1's translateX value is greater than cube2's translateX value, then do_something will be performed. Example 2: if (cube1.translateX == cube2.translateX) { do_something; } In the above, we are testing for equality. if both the values are equal, the do_something will be executed. Example 3: if (cube1.scaleX >= cube2.scaleY) { d
Read more

Jooble.org - A Jobs Platform for VFX Artists

-
Image
I am excited to share a visual effects jobs platform that has been recommended to me! Check out Jooble.com ! Searching for jobs online is a trend that continues to grow. Large resources with an audience of millions, such as Jooble.org, are most effective in this case. They provide a huge database of offers and simplify the search through convenient tools, thereby connecting the job seeker and the employer. Jooble currently hosts job opportunities in 71 countries. This is especially relevant for freelancers seeking international connections and opportunities. Jooble’s key features Collecting jobs from resources all over the world. Thus, in one place collected offers from numerous online sites, including even regional and city websites, which significantly saves time on searching. Excellent usability in both desktop and mobile versions. There is no unnecessary information on the site that can be confusing. First of all, the owners monetize the platform from the traffic sent to the sites
Read more